Rachet the cat was cruelly thrown in a river to drown, but she escapes and finds a home with the feral cats living by the Roxville train station. As Rachet learns to live with the cats and other animals, Mike, a local foster child, spots her and decides to befriend her. But Mike must learn to ?speak? the language of cats to gain Rachet?s trust. This gorgeous novel from celebrated author Jean Craighead George offers insight into feline behavior as it explores the wonder of friendship and the natural world hiding among us.
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George, whose writings have taken readers many places in the natural world, now brings them a story set close to home: a New York train station, the gathering spot of a group of feral cats. Ratchet, an orange-and-white cat, is dumped on the road. Suddenly on her own, she must adapt to the life of an outdoor cat, foraging for food, finding a place to live, avoiding predators, and adjusting to the feral-cat hierarchy. There’s a boy, too, Mike, who wants to bring her home; unfortunately, his foster mother hates cats. Without anthropomorphism, yet personalizing her characters, George follows Ratchet as she leaves kittenhood and becomes the savvy feline who can watch out for herself as well as her eventual kittens. Simply and directly, George weaves the whys and wherefores of cats’ lives (as well as those of other animals) into a smooth narrative. The adult characters are sometimes overdrawn, especially Mike’s unpleasant foster mother, but with the felines in the forefront, they’re easily ignored. This is a book kids will both enjoy and learn from. Grades 4-6. --Ilene Cooper
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
About the Author
Jean Craighead George is the author of more than one hundred books for young people, including the Newbery Award–winning Julie of the Wolves and My Side of the Mountain. She lives in Chappaqua, New York.
Tom Pohrt is the renowned illustrator of several bestselling children’s books. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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More About the Author
Jean Craighead George was born in a family of naturalists. Her father, mother, brothers, aunts and uncles were students of nature. On weekends they camped in the woods near their Washington, D.C. home, climbed trees to study owls, gathered edible plants and made fish hooks from twigs. Her first pet was a turkey vulture. In third grade she began writing and hasn't stopped yet. She has written over 100 books.Her book, Julie of the Wolves won the prestigious Newbery Medal, the American Library Association's award for the most distinguished contribution to literature for children, l973. My Side of the Mountain, the story of a boy and a falcon surviving on a mountain together, was a 1960 Newbery Honor Book. She has also received 20 other awards.She attended Penn State University graduating with a degree in Science and Literature. In the 1940s she was a reporter for The Washington Post and a member of the White House Press Corps. After her children were born she returned to her love of nature and brought owls, robins, mink, sea gulls, tarantulas - 173 wild animals into their home and backyard. These became characters in her books and, although always free to go, they would stay with the family until the sun changed their behavior and they migrated or went off to seek partners of their own kind.When her children, Twig, Craig and Luke, were old enough to carry their own backpacks, they all went to the animals. They climbed mountains, canoed rivers, hiked deserts. Her children learned about nature and Jean came home and to write books. Craig and Luke are now environmental scientists and Twig writes children's books, too.One summer Jean learned that the wolves were friendly, lived in a well-run society and communicated with each other in wolf talk -- sound, sight, posture, scent and coloration. Excited to learn more, she took Luke and went to the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory in Barrow, Alaska, where scientists were studying this remarkable animal. She even talked to the wolves in their own language. With that Julie of the Wolves was born. A little girl walking on the vast lonesome tundra outside Barrow, and a magnificent alpha male wolf, leader of a pack in Denali National Park were the inspiration for the characters in the book. Years later, after many requests from her readers, she wrote the sequels, Julie and Julie's Wolf Pack.She is still traveling and coming home to write. In the last decade she has added two beautiful new dimensions to her words beautiful full-color picture book art by Wendell Minor and others and - music. Jean is collaborating with award-winning composer, Chris Kubie to bring the sounds of nature to her words.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Richie's Picks: THE CATS OF ROXVILLE STATION,
By Richie Partington "Richie's Picks" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Cats of Roxville Station (Hardcover)
"A lady in a fur coat threw a fighting, hissing cat off a bridge, got back into her car, and sped into the night.
"Rachet the cat splashed into the river. "She felt the wetness, and hating it, reached out to claw this enemy. Her paw struck a stick, raked it for a better hold, and she was swimming. "An eddy caught her, swirled her shoreward until she felt stones under her feet and ran out of the water. Shaking her paws, she four-footed it into a woods that edged the river. When she was out of sight of the bridge she stopped, shook herself, and frantically licked the water off her sodden tiger-striped fur. With her forepaw, she cleaned her ears of the river water, then her face and whiskers. The bruise on her ribs where the lady had kicked her yesterday had been soothed by the cold water and was no longer throbbing. "When she was almost dry, she crept deeper into the night woods. Rachet, like all cats, found her way in the dark with the rods in her eyes, which could take in the faintest of light, even starlight, and make the night into day. Smelling dryness, she hurried to the fallen leaves under an oak tree and frantically rolled in them. Then, shivering with loneliness and fright, she meowed in her baby voice to bring her mother. There was no answer. Her world had changed." Did you know that there is meaning in the way a cat holds its tail? That cats can have altercations through which the social order is forever altered despite there not being any physical contact? THE CATS OF ROXVILLE STATION is the story of Rachet the cat and of Mike, the foster child who longs for a cat his can call his own. As is Jean Craighead George's style, readers will come to know all sorts of true and weird stuff about the animal characters as they follow the action. In this case, we learn about Rachet and a half dozen other feral cats as well as the other animals living in this corner of a suburban neighborhood. There is Windy the barn owl, Ringx the raccoon, Cheeks the chipmunk, Fang the milk snake, Shifty the red fox, and Lysol the skunk. (No, the author does NOT give names to the neighborhood mice and rats. In this death-don't-have-no-mercy environment, that would be akin to naming the individual chips in a bag of Fritos. Nevertheless, we do learn gnarly details about the ability of mice to reproduce on a scale that necessitates the use of exponents and/or calculators.) "Rachet rubbed her own personal scent on the buckets and boxes to make her smell-trail through the junk. To a cat the smell-trail was as bright as neon lights are to people." For that matter, death hasn't offered Mike much mercy, either. His mother died when he was three; his father died when he was eight; and after a group home experience and a failed foster situation, he came to live in a big, old house with Mr. and Mrs. Dibber. The kindly husband shared boating and baseball with Mike, but then he died, too. Now Mike is alone with the hard-hearted widow and she has no use for cats and little praise for Mike. But like Sam Gribley from George's MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN, and Miyax from JULIE OF THE WOLVES, Mike is an observant and resourceful adolescent -- a survivor -- who is determined to find a way through the difficult hand he has been dealt. His patience and determination is the perfect match for a cat who has only known cruelty by the hands of humans. I have not paid a lot of attention to the feral cats who have come and gone from my farm over the years. In recent months there has been a black cat that I have observed periodically: Sometimes I look out the upstairs window and see it wandering up or down the long driveway. Sometimes I go out to the barn at night to check on the goats, and glimpse it bolting out of the hay room when I enter. I am happy to share the farm with cats in the same way that -- I learned from this book -- the Egyptians welcomed and began domesticating these curious creatures four thousand years ago. The past couple of days, when I see that black cat outside, I find myself taking a second look and watching more thoughtfully. Thanks to Jean Craighead George, I have a newfound respect for cats -- the kind of respect that comes from really knowing about something.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I loved it!!,
By J-Mom (Loogootee, IN United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Cats of Roxville Station (Hardcover)
If you are a person who loves cats, watches cats, communicates with cats, and is interested in cats' behavior, you will most likely find this book fascinating! The story is good but the details about how the cats interact with each other and with humans is amazing. I liked the description of how the main cat character (a dumped kitten) integrated herself into the feral cat community.
I picked this up at the library in the section for older kids, because it was on display and was about cats. (I'm an adult.) I started reading it and finished it in two sessions because I was so engrossed in it. There is also information about other animals woven in, such as owls, foxes, and raccoons. Warning: there are a few sad events.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
death, death and more death,
By p.h.w. (GA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Cats of Roxville Station (Hardcover)
This book is one of the saddest books that I've read to my daughter. I really dislike all the death and sadness in this book. The part when three blind and helpless kittens are fumigated and thrown in a dumpster and then a little while later their mother eats a piece of poisoned meat and dies was a bit too much. I'm glad that this was a library book.
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